Coaching Skills

Managers with great coaching skills understand that it starts with the ability to establish rapport with employees based on mutual trust. That is the foundation of a healthy manager-employee relationship and it is the key to employee growth and performance.

In our highly competitive culture, teamwork is often impacted negatively by the individual members’ efforts to ensure they receive recognition and compensation for their personal creativity. While valid and important, leaders are often baffled as to how to integrate the individual goal into the team culture and communications and still improve the quality of teamwork.

Join experts Marcia Hughes and James Terrell as they explore ways to diagnose where the individual needs of the members (talent) get tangled up with the collective productivity of the team and how to sort them out.

Participants will learn

Understanding why talent and teams tangle

Combining the roles of being an individual performer and a good team member

Every day we encounter challenges when we are working that test our ability to be resilient, to be strong and overcome difficulties, and to thrive, not just survive. Some days the challenges are small: a computer problem or vendor issue. Other days the challenges are large: losing a job or a conflict with a colleague. To overcome these challenges, we need to proactively build our ability to be resilient.

During this one-hour webinar, training expert Kevin Nourse will introduce the Resiliency Framework, which was developed from extensive research and interviews. The framework consists of six strategies that help people thrive in the face of career challenges. The strategies are also applicable to all people developers who help others develop resiliency including coaches and HR professionals.

Participants will learn

Understand key concepts including career adversity, resiliency, and thriving

Assess your vulnerabilities that may limit your resiliency

Explore actions you can take to enhance your resiliency and more successful thrive in the face of career adversity

Kevin Nourse has more than 20 years of experience helping leaders resiliently lead and navigate change. He draws from his doctoral research studying the experiences of managers in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, as well as volunteer work with hospice patients. Kevin founded Nourse Leadership Strategies in 1991 and offers executive coaching and leadership development programs. He is on the faculty of Georgetown University and the co-author of Shift Into Thrive: Six Strategies for Women to Unlock the Power of Resiliency.

You’ve heard it so many times before, that “teamwork makes the dream work.” Now, you have your team place, but you are still not seeing the results you want. You know you need to learn how to make your team successful.

Sound familiar? In my recent video, you will learn some quick tips on how to make your team successful, build a winning team, retain that team, and make them world class in everything they do.

How to make your team successful:

Tip #1: Invest in your team’s success

What your team truly wants is to feel like you have as much commitment and drive in helping them to succeed as you have for them in the goals you’ve laid out for them.

Your team wants to see that you have faith in them and that you are willing to go the extra mile to help them succeed.

Tip #2: Have a roadmap for success

You need to provide your team with clear directions, specific strategies, and a play-by-play game plan that can realistically help them to achieve the goals you set out for them.

Show your team that it is possible to achieve these goals and provide them guidance to reach them.

Let them know that you are there to help them grow and develop. Tell them you are invested in their success just as much as you are invested in your own success.

Tip #3: Have checks and balances

Make sure that you have checks and balances and that you are inspecting what you expect in real time. Give your team a set of accountabilities that they are measured to frequently.

This will help to show your team whether they are on track with their goals.

Tip #4: Give feedback

Provide your team with both constructive and positive feedback based on their performance and do it regularly.

This will help you to grow your team, make them better, and give them a better affinity towards you.

Kelly Roach is the founder of Kelly Roach Coaching, a rapid growth coaching and consulting company for business owners, entrepreneurs, and executive leaders.

A few years ago Kelly was successful, but was yearning for more. She knew she was meant for something bigger, and wanted to create a business that allowed her to serve others, make a difference, and create unlimited income while doing it. After personally producing more than $30 million in sales in record time, Kelly charged to the top of a global Fortune 500 firm, netting 7 promotions in 8 years. That’s when she launched Kelly Roach International, to help businesses do the extraordinary by using innovative strategies to rapidly increase productivity and profits.

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Today’s workplace is increasingly made up of diverse teams whose members span many cultures, departments and locations. To gain the commitment and cooperation of these teams, leaders must rely on their influence. There are many ways to influence, but some are significantly more effective than others. Our own research shows the most successful leaders use four core influencing behaviors: Reasoning, consulting, collaborating and inspiring.

Many leaders use these behaviors without even thinking about them. However, they may not be taking into account other important factors that determine effectiveness, such as the situation and cultural context. Recognizing the behaviors they use most often and understanding what they can do to improve will help them be more effective influencers.

This interactive guide outlines the fundamentals of effective influencing behaviors, when to use them and how influence varies across cultures and gender. It’s based on our own research and research from others in this area. Take the first step toward empowering your leaders by exploring the guide and sharing it with your teams.

Rick Lepsinger is president of OnPoint Consulting, a top organizational and leadership development consulting firm that offers a variety of training and assessment solutions to help cross-functional teams enhance performance. To learn more, visit onpointconsultingllc.com.

Are your team’s goals aligned with a shared vision? As Yogi Berra said, “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.”

Taking time out to look at the big picture and where you’re going will save you time in the long run.

In our book, Full Steam Ahead! Unleash the Power of Vision, Ken Blanchard and I explain that “Vision is knowing who you are, where you’re going, and what will guide your journey.”

“Who you are” is your purpose, your reason for existence. “Where you’re going” is a picture of what it looks like when you are fulfilling your purpose. “What will guide your journey” are your values, how you proceed as you go forward.

In our book we give an example of an accounting department that thought their purpose was to collect and financial information. They were having difficulty getting the information they needed from other departments. In working on their vision, they realized that their purpose was to provide sound information to help leaders make good financial decisions, and they identified values of responsiveness, accuracy and dependability. As a result, they set very different goals, their relationships improved immeasurably and they became much more effective.

When goals are not connected to a clear purpose and values, people often work at cross-purposes with each other, not “rowing in the same direction.”

When you see a clear line of sight between your goals and where you are going, it’s easier to stay motivated. You see why they are important and it helps answer the question “What’s next” once they are achieved.

A vision that stems from your team’s values and beliefs generates a tremendous amount of excitement and commitment. Team members see themselves as part of a larger whole and they see where they fit in. Day-to-day activities have more meaning because it is clear how they make a real contribution to the team.

Leaders spend less time managing others and day-to-day crises and have more time focusing on planning and big picture issues.

And because everyone knows they each desire the same result and share the same values, they can act more independently without concern for competing self-interest, creativity flourishes ,and there is a greater level of trust.

3 Tips to Align Goals With Your Vision

Set the right goals.

Goals are the milestones that mark your journey toward your vision. They are the means to get there as they quantify and define the steps you take along the way.

Where your vision is broad and big, goals are tangible and specific. They answer questions like “when?’ and “how?” and “how much?” SMART goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound.

To select the right goals, always keep your vision in mind. Look for some goals that will you leapfrog forward, some that address the greatest pain, and some that provide some quick wins.

Remember, you’re going to be held accountable for achieving your goals, so choose those that are a stretch but also realistic.

Make goal-setting an ongoing process, not an annual event.

The problem with annual goal-setting is it doesn’t work. You can’t plan an entire year and know in advance all the goals you will need to achieve.

As you proceed, things will happen that make some of your goals irrelevant. Things will happen that require setting some new goals. Some goals will take less time than you anticipated to accomplish, and others will take longer.

SMART goals are measurable and trackable. As you track your goals, revisit your vision, to be sure they are still aligned. And as you complete a goal, set new ones in relation to your vision.

Create “structural integrity”

Not only must goals be aligned with your vision, but to be successful, your team needs “structural integrity” – where all of the underlying systems and processes that support your team are designed to steer you in the direction you want to go.

A team might start off aligned around a shared vision, but unaligned systems and practices can quickly derail them.

Are team members dependent on each other in order to accomplish certain goals?

. . . If so, what communication processes are in place so they can effectively coordinate their efforts?

Does their vision include providing excellent customer service?

. . . If so, do customer-contact people have the authority to make key decisions regarding the customer?

Do any of the goals depend on a team effort?

. . . If so, are there provisions to evaluate and compensate team members on team performance or are they rewarded solely on the basis of their individual performance?

Jesse Lyn Stoner is founder of Seapoint Center for Collaborative Leadership and coauthor with Ken Blanchard of the international bestseller Full Steam Ahead: Unleash the Power of Vision, translated into 22 languages. A business consultant and former executive, her clients include Edelman, Marriott, SAP, Stanley Black and Decker, Skanska, and Yale University, to name a few.

Named as Inc magazine’s Top 50 Leadership Expert, American Management Association’s Leader to Watch in 2015, and ConantLeadership 2016 Leadership Champion Award, she writes a popular weekly leadership blog and has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Huffington Post, and Forbes among others.